Post consumer recycled (PCR) resin is the recycled product of waste created by consumers whereas virgin resins are produced from fossil fuels.
When PCR resins are reused and transformed into new products, less fossil fuels are required, which has environmental implications such as reducing greenhouse/carbon gas emissions. There will also be a continuing economic incentive to use PCR versus virgin resins as the overall cost of petroleum-based raw materials continually increases.
Various methods utilized in the past to integrate post-consumer resins into extrusion process resulted in varying degrees of success. The recycled resins have generally degraded mechanical properties as the result of numerous heat cycles, branching created by infiltration of foreign polymers and ultimately scission of the long polyethylene chains. These degraded mechanical properties result in sheet defects during the extrusion process and thus render the utilization of recycled resin as having a negative impact on extrusion costs.
There is therefore still a need to identify applications to integrate post-consumer resins and especially so in order to provide products having advantageous properties susceptible to provide an industrial application.